


in the woods somewhere

by callunavulgari, hiza-chan (callunavulgari)



Series: Dark Month Collection [69]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: 31 Days Of Halloween, Blood and Injury, FBI Agent Stiles Stilinski, Getting Together, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Mild Gore, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 04:03:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21009422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari, https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/hiza-chan
Summary: Stiles buys a house in Virginia. It’s a modest thing close to Quantico, but nottoo close, tucked away into the heart of the wooded Appalachians. The bones of the house is all stonework and sturdy dark wood, a rickety wraparound porch bracketing the house on all sides. The first thing that he’d bought for it were two overpriced rocking chairs he’d gotten from the nearest Cracker Barrel.Over the course of a year, he fills the house with things. A soft, dark gray sofa. Several solid end tables. A pair of emerald lamps he gets from an antique shop. A moss-green throw that is warm as a hug when it’s wrapped around his shoulders in the dead of winter.It’s three winters into living there before he hears a scratching at his door in the middle of the night, and when he goes to investigate, finds a large black wolf on his doorstep. It’s favoring one of its paws, dark fur matted on one side of its head where he can dimly make out a sluggishly bleeding gash. It blinks at him, eyes glowing a bright, familiar blue, and Stiles spends a minute watching it before he smiles and steps aside.





	in the woods somewhere

**Author's Note:**

> Day... 11 of October. Though technically written on the 12th and damn near posted on the 13th. But it was Nick's birthday yesterday and I figure your SO's birthday is a good reason to miss a self-appointed deadline.
> 
> Prompts were: chilly weather, bloody sweater, a quiet night, childhood fear, travel, hesitation, gore/soft gore, and underwater.
> 
> I knew that I wanted at least one of these to be Sterek, because it's been a long, long time and I did miss it. Also I wanted to write them a soft epilogue.

Stiles buys a house in Virginia. It’s a modest thing close to Quantico, but not _too close_, tucked away into the heart of the wooded Appalachians. The bones of the house is all stonework and sturdy dark wood, a rickety wraparound porch bracketing the house on all sides. The first thing that he’d bought for it were two overpriced rocking chairs he’d gotten from the nearest Cracker Barrel.

Over the course of a year, he fills the house with things. A soft, dark gray sofa. Several solid end tables. A pair of emerald lamps he gets from an antique shop. A moss-green throw that is warm as a hug when it’s wrapped around his shoulders in the dead of winter. His living room is a bit too mountain man chic, but he likes the way that it looks when he’s coming home from a long day at the academy, warm and inviting.

He gets his bed set from a woodworker a couple dozen miles down the road, a man with a gruff bristled gray face and a warm smile, who trades Stiles the custom set for some warding and a couple bottles of what he calls, ‘miracle elixir.’ The set is sturdy mahogany, a pair of wolves carved across the top of the curving headboard, runes filling the gaps between them. The chest of drawers and dresser are just as solid, and Stiles has to hire movers to help him get everything back to the house.

The bulky rednecks decked out in worn flannel that help him with it carefully avoid looking at the runes of the headboard, their eyes skittering away from the carvings like frightened rabbits. They exchange apprehensive looks when they see the herbs drying over the sink in his kitchen, but to their credit, stay quiet and hightail it out of the place when he pays them. Here in the Appalachian backwoods, no one talks about magic, but everyone knows it exists.

Stiles has people over every once in a while - flies his dad and Scott in from California, has Lydia drive down from Boston, or Kira from North Carolina - but mostly, he’s alone. It’s a strange thing to get used to, the silence of the nights out here, where the night sky is bright and clear enough to see the stars above him, not a hint of light pollution to be seen, and the trees rustling in a quiet wind is almost louder than the hoots and hollers of the local wildlife.

He’d thought it would be lonely, and to be fair, sometimes it is.

Some nights he comes home and collapses back onto his sofa, and would do anything to be right down the road from Scott and Melissa and his dad again. He has days where he craves Melissa’s pozole or his dad’s meatloaf so badly that he can taste the heat of it on his tongue.

But mostly, the quiet is nice.

He cooks himself soups that simmer in the slow cooker while he’s at the academy and roasts that he makes on the weekends. He experiments with food the way he never used to back in Beacon Hills, where he had his dad’s heart to worry about if he made anything, and fast food which was easier to grab when he didn’t. He takes a world tour through his kitchen - homemade pierogi, hearty paella, steaming pirozhki, spicy-smelling curries, and hand rolled sushi. The first time that he makes his own bread in the ancient oven that came with the house, the smell of it coming fresh out of the oven is so good that he nearly cries.

It’s three winters into living there before he hears a scratching at his door in the middle of the night, and when he goes to investigate, finds a large black wolf on his doorstep.

It’s favoring one of its paws, dark fur matted on one side of its head where he can dimly make out a sluggishly bleeding gash. It blinks at him, eyes glowing a bright, familiar blue, and Stiles spends a minute watching it before he smiles and steps aside.

Derek doesn’t usually stay long. He curls up on his side on Stiles’s couch, nursing some wound usually, a broken paw or a jagged cut across the belly, and each time, Stiles will sit down next to him, and crack open one of the jars that he’s got stowed on the lip of the kitchen window, and carefully rub the paste onto the injury.

It wasn’t miracle elixir, despite what the woodworker might think. It was a careful blend of herbs and spices, mixed with the most powerful ingredient that Stiles had at his disposal - belief.

But it works. Works on whatever mysterious wounds that Derek brings him, on the arthritis of the old waitress in the diner just off of the freeway, on his dad’s sore feet.

Derek is usually gone when he wakes up, and Stiles spends the morning wondering if he’d shifted back at all before he left. Sometimes he thinks that he’s just missed him, because the rug in front of his shower is slightly damp, the room still humid, or the spot that Derek had slept on the night before would still be faintly warm to the touch.

“You know that you can stay a little longer sometimes, right?” Stiles asks one night, when Derek had woken him up at two in the morning with his scratches. Derek’s ears go flat and he huffs, a pointed little noise as good as rolling his eyes.

Stiles shrugs it off, trying not to feel too offended. “Suit yourself.”

Except, Derek does end up staying longer after that. Stiles will wake up and instead of an empty room he’ll stumble in on Derek still curled into himself, eyes cracked open, just the faintest hint of blue, as if he’s trying to gauge Stiles’s reaction.

Stiles makes breakfast, leaving Derek some sausage and egg when he leaves. It’s usually gone when he stumbles back that night, but more often than not, Derek is too.

He doesn’t know where Derek goes when he’s not there. Doesn’t know if he spends most of his time in his wolf form or if he’s some skinny drifter coasting through truck stops and diners. He doesn’t even know why Derek is close to Virginia, but sometimes, Stiles will go months without seeing him, long enough that he starts to get concerned before he wakes to a familiar scratch at his door. Other times, he’ll see Derek several times a week.

He’s got his theories, most of them revolving around the idea that Derek moonlights as some kind of werewolf superhero, going from town to town looking for rogue wolves or possessed high schoolers. He’d thought for a while that he might be a truck driver, but no rig could fit down his road, and if he’d left it idling on the main road, Stiles would have seen it by now.

Then, on a chilly night in late November, Stiles wakes in the middle of the night to… something. A thump on the porch. It isn’t a scratch, and Stiles spends several minutes with his comforter pulled up to his ears, straining to see if the noise comes again.

It does, a thunk that sounds a little fleshy, like a head or an arm striking his door. Then comes a strange dragging sound, and Stiles hears the noise again, closer to his window, this time closer to a knock than a thump.

The wooden floorboards are cold under his feet, and it’s a bit too late in the year for Stiles to be comfortably walking around his house in his boxers, but his heart had started hammering the moment that he’d registered the knock and he doesn’t have time to get dressed if Derek’s bleeding out on his damn porch.

When the door swings open, Derek is swaying in the doorway, gray-faced and wet, his whole body soaked to the bone, a bloody sweater hanging limply from his frame, jeans dark and heavy looking.

Stiles blinks at him, and knows that he should be moving, offering a helping hand or a shoulder to lean on to get Derek out of the cold, but it’s been years since Stiles has seen Derek Hale in his human form, and his eyes are greedy.

Derek is skinny - skinnier than his wolf form had lead Stiles to believe, his cheekbones so sharp that they leant his face a gaunt, half-starved look. The sweater that’s half hanging off of him may have been purple once, but is now saturated with grimy water and shredded in several places. Through those gaping holes, Stiles catches a glimpse of claw marks, still bleeding sluggishly.

He blinks, reaching even as Derek tilts.

They’ve been here before, he thinks hysterically, gathering Derek in against him before he can fall. Derek’s skin is cool to the touch, pallid and covered in goosebumps.

“It’s okay,” he croaks, towing Derek over the threshold. “I’ve got you.”

He leaves the door open behind him, dragging Derek’s unresistant body over to the sofa and then easing him down onto it, an arm wrapped carefully around his shoulders. His hands go to the button on Derek’s jeans on pure instinct, and doesn’t even think anything of it until Derek growls softly above him.

Stiles hesitates, fingers just barely grazing the button. The metal is ice cold to the touch.

He raises his gaze, meets Derek’s glowing blue eyes, and says, “I’m sorry, but you need to take these off. You’re freezing.”

Derek swallows, and Stiles watches his throat work for a moment, before carefully laying a hand on a damp knee. Derek’s lashes flutter, his body jerking under Stiles’s touch.

“Look,” Stiles tells him. “Either I can take them off or you can. Whatever you're comfortable with.”

Derek stares at him, and slowly, the glow fades from his gaze. After another agonizing minute, he nods.

Stiles’s hands are shaking as he unbuttons and unzips Derek’s pants. He’d been running on instinct before but now he is overwhelmingly aware of the fact that he is taking Derek’s clothes off of him. It makes him nervous, his pulse rabbiting away in his wrists as he shoves Derek’s jeans over his hips and then down his thighs to pool at his bare feet.

“Shirt next,” he says, voice quavering a little.

He thinks that Derek will call him on it, but he just raises his arms, wincing as the motion tugs on the edges of the marks clawed into his gut.

Stiles is gentle as he pulls the sweater over Derek’s head, tossing it into the corner of the room, where it lands with a wet-sounding smack. He pulls the throw off the back of the couch and tucks it around Derek’s shoulders, folding it carefully over his knees.

“Stay here,” he whispers, pushing himself up off of Derek’s knee.

He closes the front door first, noting the claw marks and blood smearing the doorway, and thinks that if any of his neighbors hadn't thought he was a witch before, they definitely will now.

Then he goes to the kitchen, and cracks open a jar.

By the time he gets back to the couch, Derek is huddled into the throw, only the top half of his head and his toes poking out. The corner of Stiles’s mouth quirks, and Derek catches his eyes from across the room.

Stiles crosses to take a seat next to him. “Can I see?”

Derek shudders, and then drops the blanket to pool around his waist.

His stomach is… bad. It looks like something did it’s damnedest to disembowel him completely, claw marks slashed low across his pelvis and up further, over the ribs. If Stiles looks hard enough, he think that he can see bloody white bone under the wet red of flayed muscle.

“Jesus,” he hisses, and dips a couple fingers into the jar.

The human part of him insists that wounds like these need a goddamn hospital, not herbal concoctions, or at the very least some antiseptic, but Stiles has treated enough werewolves over the years to know that given enough time, they’ll bounce back from the worst wounds.

Derek shivers again when Stiles’s fingers nudge up against the lip of frayed skin, and Stiles glances up at him, not sure if he should stop. But Derek’s eyes are closed, and he’s biting down so hard on his lower lip that that’s bleeding now too, a small trickle trickling down his chin.

“So, do you talk anymore?” Stiles asks conversationally, not looking up as he works the poultice into the worst of Derek’s wounds.

“Yes,” Derek says after a long minute.

Stiles’s lips quirk up at the corners, and he dips his fingers back into the jar for more before he moves on to the marks over Derek’s ribs. These are deeper, and yes, he _had_ seen bone before because his knuckles are brushing up against it now.

“Just like old times,” he quips, finishing up. He wants to wrap the ribs, but knows that Derek will probably heal better if he doesn’t, so he resists the urge, smoothing a hand up Derek’s flank like he would if Derek were in his wolf form before he climbs heavily to his feet.

Derek is watching him, his eyes that human mix of green and gray and brown that Stiles had half forgotten. “Not like old times. You’re too quiet.”

Stiles shrugs. “I mellowed out with age.”

It's mostly true. Derek doesn’t need to hear about the nights that Stiles spends drowning himself in hyper-fixation, the nights that anxiety sets his pulse racing, or the days that he spends rambling to his coworkers when he's made the mistake of drinking too much caffeine. He’s quieter, but not the damn near medicated quiet he’d been when the nogitsune had climbed into his skin.

Derek nods, eyes still on Stiles, so Stiles smiles. “I’ll make us dinner.”

“You don’t have to-”

“Nope,” Stiles agrees, snorting. “But you woke me up and I never got a chance to eat before I went to sleep, so you’re giving me the excuse to grab something now.”

He steps out of the room before Derek can argue any more, padding into the kitchen and flicking the light on as he goes. It’s nothing fancy, just warmed up leftover chili, but when he removes the bowls from the microwave, they’re warm under his fingers, and the smell of chili powder and spiced beef permeates the air.

When he comes back to the living room, Derek is huddled up into his blanket again, staring blankly at the dark television. His eyes flick towards Stiles when he enters the room, nostrils flaring.

“Dinner is served,” Stiles tells him, setting Derek's bowl onto the coffee table before him. He keeps his own balanced on his knees and delights in the warmth seeping into them. He’d grabbed some pajama pants and a t-shirt while the chili was heating up, but the chill lingers on in his bones, his toes and the tips of his fingers so cold that they’re turning slightly blue.

“Thanks,” Derek mumbles, and Stiles pauses in the act of blowing on his food.

He slants an eye towards Derek, but he’s focused completely on the chili already, shoveling it into his mouth before it even gets the chance to cool.

“You planning on telling me what happened?” he asks, carefully focused on the bowl in his hands rather than Derek himself. He takes a bite and flavor explodes across his tongue.

Derek finishes eating before he answers, gulping down bite after bite like he hasn't eaten in months. For all Stiles knows, other than the occasional breakfast sandwich that Stiles has left him, Derek might not have been eating. It would certainly explain the gauntness. 

When he's done, Derek sets the bowl down, leaning back into the couch, his eyes fixed firmly to the ceiling. Then, he opens his mouth and in a quiet whisper confesses, “I never used to be afraid of drowning."

Stiles drops his spoon.

When he turns to look, Derek is smiling a little ruefully at his toes, but is quick to turn his attention to Stiles. “When I was young, I was always afraid of little kid things. The dark. My closet. I was actually afraid of wolves for a little while, can you believe that?”

Stiles’s eyes go wide. “Seriously?”

Derek snorts, nodding.

“I caught my mom on a bad shift. There were some rogue alphas sniffing around where they didn’t belong and there was… a fight. It was pretty vicious. I had nightmares about wolves for weeks afterward.” Derek sighs a little, and glances at him, almost shyly. “Since that night in the pool, I’ve had nightmares about drowning. Every couple months for the last few years. Then, tonight I almost drowned.” His lips curl humorlessly, eyes catching Stiles’s. “Coming to you was natural.”

They sit in silence, and Stiles closes his eyes against the memory of chlorine and the endless, exhausting tread of water. He has dreams about that night himself sometimes.

“What was it?” He licks his lips, nodding towards the claw marks. “The thing that did _that_?”

Derek frowns. “Not sure. A kappa or some kind of naga, I think. Some sort of river elemental, that’s for sure.”

Stiles considers asking what he was doing there, but before he can do so, Derek shivers, a head to toe quake, and when Stiles opens his mouth what comes out instead is: “Are you still cold?”

Derek looks at him and shrugs. “Yeah. Think I’ll probably be cold for awhile.”

“All right, then.” Stiles nods, pushing himself off the couch, then turns to offer a hand to Derek.

The frown on Derek’s face shifts around the edges, like he’s thinking about protesting. But after a minute, he takes Stiles’s hand.

Stiles leads him to the bathroom. It’s small and a little cramped, but it’s painted a rich dark blue, and there’s a brown floor mat laid out over the tiles. The shower itself is small, an old clawfoot tub that was probably used solely for baths before someone installed a crappy showerhead and a curved metal rung to hang a shower curtain around it.

He knows that Derek’s used his shower before, has felt the evidence in the dampness of the bathmat under their feet, but he shows him the knobs anyway, and cranks it up as hot as it’ll go without burning skin. After a moment, steam begins to billow out around them.

He turns to Derek, who is lingering close, and realizes that he may have underestimated how intimate this moment would feel. He licks his lips, tasting the humid air like a reptile, and asks, “Do you think you’ll be good?”

It’s… something. An offer, maybe. Derek looks at him for a moment, before turning that consternation to the shower. There’s something like a flush around his cheekbones.

He shrugs again, looking uncomfortable.

“I can stay if you want,” Stiles says, avoiding Derek’s eyes.

Derek spends another few seconds glaring at the shower curtain before he gives a curt nod. Stiles takes a seat on the toilet lid, looking away as Derek steps out of his boxers, and offering a hand so he can step up into the tub.

There’s a hiss when the water hits Derek’s skin, an uncomfortable little noise that makes Stiles think that he may have left the water too hot, but Derek just steps further under the spray, the steam partially obscuring him from view. He leaves the curtain slightly askew, and Stiles watches him stand there, the heat of the water making his shoulders blush red.

“Need some help?” he asks, half jokingly, after Derek’s been standing there for a good five minutes, just soaking in the heat of the water.

To his surprise, Derek turns to him, water beading his lashes and nods.

Stiles licks his lips, and considers his approach. Getting in with Derek would be nearly unbearable. Too close, too intimate, too like the fantasies that he’d spent his teenage years dreaming up in dark rooms. But the tub is tall, and like this, he’s pretty sure that he couldn’t reach Derek’s hair comfortably without making him stoop.

In the end, he strips off the t-shirt and pajama bottoms, leaving him in his boxers as he steps into the tub. It’s a tight fit, and he has to steady himself with a hand to Derek’s sternum when his feet nearly go out from under him.

Derek lets out a surprised little breath when their skin touches, one hand darting out to wrap around Stiles’s bicep.

Stiles holds himself still, barely breathing. This was stupid, he thinks. Derek’s body is so close that their torsos are almost touching, and with the curved sides of the bath, there’s nowhere to really sidestep out of his reach.

He’s mostly out of the spray, but the water hitting Derek’s skin is reflecting back up onto Stiles in the form of a fine mist. Despite the heat of the water, the mist is chilly.

Stiles can feel the warmth of Derek’s body from where he's standing, and wants, for the first time in years, to_ touch_.

He holds Derek’s gaze, licks his lips a little and watches as Derek’s eyes flick down towards them.

“Sorry,” he breathes, and Derek blinks. “Slippery.”

Derek nods, but there’s still something there, calculating and a little bit shrewd as he scoots backwards to make more room for Stiles, his back nudging up against the faucet.

Stiles steps under the spray with him. The hand on his bicep relaxes, then lets go, trailing slowly down his arm before it's gone. Stiles shivers under the touch.

The shampoo is just out of reach, past the curve of Derek’s hip, so Stiles just stands there stupidly for several long minutes, soaking up the same heat as Derek. The poultice on Derek’s stomach is sloughing off of him in chunks, leaving behind pink, newly healed skin in its wake. It’s still red, irritated, and probably more than a little bit fragile, but the claw marks themselves are completely gone. Before Stiles can think better of it he reaches out between them, laying a palm over all that new, pink skin. Derek's belly twitches, muscles contracting, and he lets out a soft, surprised noise. 

“Sorry,” he says again, fingers tracing the intact skin. “I just… didn’t realize that it worked that fast.”

Derek catches Stiles’s wrist, stilling his fingers, and Stiles blinks in surprise, glancing up at him. There’s something in Derek’s eyes that Stiles hasn’t seen in years. A flare of heat and interest that Stiles thought that he’d maybe dreamed up. He bites his lip against the urge to apologize again, against the urge to say something else that he’ll probably regret.

The pads of his fingers drag gently against Derek’s skin, reflexive movement that even he can’t help, and the water is warm on his chest and back, and Derek is so very close. So human and real, and Stiles _wants_.

When Derek looks back at him, Stiles can see that want reflected back at him, and knows that Derek wants it too.

“Oh,” he says, quiet, and Derek lets go of his wrist.

Before Stiles can do something stupid like apologize _again_, Derek’s hands are on him, dragging him in by the hips, until they’re pressed together. Stiles’s breath catches in his throat, a full body shudder shaking him to his core at the feel of warm wet skin, all that corded muscle and compact heat against him.

He looks at Derek, eyes widening as one of Derek’s hands come up to cradle his jaw and he leans in, catching Stiles in a warm, open-mouthed kiss.

Stiles closes his eyes.

He’s never kissed anyone in the shower before, so he isn’t exactly prepared for the slick grasp of Derek’s hungry mouth or how the water slicks between them, warm and wet. His hands find Derek’s hips, fingers digging into the hollows they find there, thumb brushing over a jutting hipbone.

He gasps when one of Derek’s hands slides up his side, finding the divots between his ribs.

“Please,” Stiles thinks he hears himself whisper, and feels Derek smile against his mouth.

“Please, what?” he murmurs, low and heated, lips kissing a trail down Stiles’s throat. 

“Touch me,” Stiles tells him, tilting his head to make room for Derek's lips on his throat, desperate and thrumming for it.

Derek chuckles, quietly. He taps his fingers against Stiles’s ribs and tells him, “I am touching you.”

Stiles sucks in a ragged breath and hitches their hips together, relishing in the punched out noise that Derek makes in response.

“Touch me _more_,” he hisses.

Something in Derek goes soft, and he kisses Stiles’s open mouth again, gently, and whispers, “Okay.”  


* * *

They end up in Stiles’s bed sometime later, the runes above their heads glittering strangely in the moonlight. Derek keeps looking up at them, like he thinks the carvings are going to lean down and eat him.

“You got wolves carved into your headboard,” he says.

Stiles hums contently. “Protection runes, too.”

Derek is quiet for a moment, and then says, “Always thought you’d be Scott’s emissary someday.”

Stiles shrugs. “Still might. Someday.”

He opens his eyes, squinting up at the ceiling. The thing is: he likes it out here. He likes the quiet, the way that you can look up and see the stars. He likes the old gruff woodcutter and the arthritic waitress. He likes the chill of the first fall frost and the way that you can see the mountains stretching up into the sky in the distance.

He likes his house and all the things that he’s filled it with. And he likes having Derek in it, likes having him warm and still sort of damp, pressed up against his side.

“This is the first time that you’ve showed up on my doorstep like this. You know, human,” Stiles says. “Why?”

Derek shrugs. “Thought it would be easier that way. Didn’t think I could trust myself around you as a human.”

Stiles scoffs. “It’s not like I’m a kid anymore.”

Derek laughs, pressing his head to Stiles’s clavicle like he can smother the sound. “No, you aren’t.”

“Then why-”

Derek shrugs, looking up at him from under dark, heavy lashes. “It’s been a long time since I’ve let myself want something.”

“Oh,” Stiles says, and then, “What changed your mind this time?”

Derek shrugs one more time, nose still buried in Stiles’s shoulder. “Figured it was about time that I let myself have something nice.”

“And that something nice was me?”

Derek looks at him for a moment, then sighs. He ducks his head and kisses the swell of Stiles's shoulder, his eyes soft, tender.

“It’s always been you, Stiles,” he murmurs. “I just- I'm sick of running. And I thought that it might be nice to have a home again. Someone to share it with. If you’ll have me.”

Stiles’s mouth is dry, but he drags Derek up to meet him anyway. Kisses the soft, slack line of his mouth, the bridge of his nose, and the space between his eyes.

Derek laughs. “I guess that means yes?”

Stiles doesn’t answer him. Not with words anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> My [tumblr](https://callunavulgari.tumblr.com/), if you dare.


End file.
